Clive Elsworth – 30 March 2016

On Wednesday 30th March the second in a series of ‘Reading climate forums’ discussed ‘carbon pricing’ – under which the cost of damage expected from global warming would be reflected in the price of fossil fuels.

Speaker Clive Elsworth from the UK branch of the Citizens Climate Lobby www.facebook.com/CitizensClimateLobbyUK explained the ‘Carbon Fee and Dividend’ approach under which a fee would be paid when fossil fuels were imported or extracted by mining or drilling … and the money raised would be shared equally between all households.

Clive argued that fossil fuels must be priced out of the market – subsidies to renewables or energy efficient travel only reduce cost of activities so lead to more consumption. He said he had been inspired by climate scientist James Hansen’s book “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity”.

Campaigner Justin Bowles then presented the views of three economists and a sociologist – saying that 90% of economists favour some form of carbon tax or carbon pricing to address climate change. He discussed the difficulties of setting a price today to reflect the risk of damage in the future.

Clive finished by hosting a role play exercise, where the audience were invited to try out some useful influencing techniques to try and sell the ‘Carbon Fee and Dividend’ concept to their local MP.